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The first site of LHS was on Lake Street, North Lismore (the present Richmond River High School site).[3] On 23 November 1918, the foundation stone was laid for the new high school building by the Member for Lismore, George Nesbitt.[4] At the time of its establishment in January 1920, it was one of only five high schools outside the Sydney metropolitan area.[5] It served the Richmond River area and until 1929 with the opening of Murwillumbah High School, was the only high school between Grafton and the Queensland border.

The Chinese-Australian journalist Vivian Chow Yung [6] attended LHS in its beginning years. Told in 1923 by an Irish-Australian schoolteacher at LHS "You are Australian now. Why worry so much about China? What does China mean to you?", Chow responded "Sir, you were born in Australia, but you are always telling us about Home Rule for Ireland. What does Ireland mean to you?" [7]

The second site of LHS was on Magellan Street in the city precinct.

By 1957 LHS was one of the largest secondary schools in the state, with an enrolment of 1,438 students and a staff of 67 teachers.[8]

Lismore High main building on Keen and Magellan streets in the 1920s.

This represented the zenith of its enrolments as the establishment of other high schools took effect: Kyogle (1955), Mullumbimby (1955), Ballina (1956) and Richmond River (1958).

The writer Bob Ellis attended LHS at this time and in a moving speech in May 1998 acknowledged the "selfless teachers I am proud to have known" and that "Lismore High gave us not only the intellectual armaments that made it possible for us to prevail in the great world beyond Lismore, but it also gave us a sense of that possibility".[9]

By the late 1960s, the Magellan Street site of the school was proving to be too small for its requirements and in May 1969 LHS moved to its third site, a new complex in East Lismore.

LHS, once the only high school in the district, is now one of three in Lismore.[10] Enrolments are now relaxed at around 600-1000 students.[2]

The Magellan Street site

The Magellan Street site has been used for educational purposes since 1882. It was originally a paddock when the Lismore Public School, established in 1867, moved there that year. The children were housed in school tents until in August 1885 they moved into a new brick building with stone foundations. From 1890 the school offered primary and secondary education, becoming the Lismore Superior School. In 1902, when the northern end of the 1885 building became unsafe, a three-storey brick building, with a covered play area on the ground floor, was built and occupied by the Girls’ Department in August 1903.[8]

Not long afterwards, most of the remaining 1885 building was demolished. The Boys’ Department of the Lismore District School was housed in a temporary wooden building until December 1911, when it moved into a two-storey brick extension at the Keen and Magellan Streets corner. During the 1920s and 1930s allotments were acquired progressively until the whole area bounded by Keen, Magellan and Dawson Streets was available for school purposes, now home to Lismore Public School and Lismore High School.[1] In February 1931 a third building opened. In 1942 Lismore Public School moved to a new complex and the vacated buildings were taken over by LHS.

With the shift of LHS to the East Lismore site, the new Lismore Teachers’ College opened in the Magellan Street site, which became from 1971 the Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education, which also housed the Northern Rivers Conservatorium Arts Centre. The college moved later to the north of the new East Lismore site to become the Lismore Campus of Southern Cross University.[8]

The 1902 school buildings on Keen Street continue to house the Northern Rivers Conservatorium Arts Centre today while various other buildings were demolished. The 1931 building on Magellan Street was retained and in 2003 became home to the Lismore City Library and various other community services.[11]

^The naming protocol used is the European given name "Vivian" followed by the Chinese surname "Chow" followed by the Chinese given name "Yung". Because of misunderstanding of Chinese naming protocols, the Chinese given name was often misused in official documents as a surname, and thus Vivian Chow is often referred to as Vivian Yung.

^Address by Vivian Chow "China in Revolution" over radio station 4QG, Brisbane, December 1932, quoted in "Celestials in a Great Garden" by Glen Hall (1975) Richmond River Historical Society, Lismore. Chow is also frequently mentioned in Professor John Fitzgerald's "Big White Lie: Chinese Australians and White Australia" (2007) Sydney, UNSW Press.